Recent reports of natural paratuberculosis in wildlife species have identified several species as potential carriers and/or shedders of Mycobacterium avium subspecies paratuberculosis (MAP), thus complicating the epidemiology of the disease in domesticated ruminants.

Objective

The aim of this study was to investigate whether MAP was carried by wildlife species interfacing with dairy sheep and goats of endemically infected flocks.

Materials and methods

Intensive sampling was carried out on the sheds and in the grazing grounds of 4 dairy sheep and goat flocks, with a history of clinical paratuberculosis. Several tissue samples from 327 wild animals of 11 species were obtained and cultured on two different media, Lowenstein-Jensen and Herrold's Egg Yolk, both supplemented with antibiotics and mycobactin J. All cultures were screened by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) for the presence of the IS900 insertion sequence. All isolates were differentiated by IS1311-PCR between MAP type I and type II strains.

Results

Thus far, three house mice (Mus musculus), a hare (Lepus europeus), a fox (Vulpes vulpes) and a black rat (Rattus rattus) were found to carry MAP. The isolates from the hare and the fox were type II strains while one mouse isolate was type I strain.

Conclusions

To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of MAP isolation from wild house mice and black rats and of MAP type I strain isolation from wild house mouse. The likely contribution of our preliminary results to the epidemiology of paratuberculosis in small ruminants should be further investigated.